A RACIST video posted on US-based internet site YouTube is yet to be removed, despite a Perth man being charged for allegedly uploading the anti-Semitic film.
Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan today said his officers had so far been unsuccessful in their negotiations with YouTube to have the controversial video pulled from the site, but inquiries were continuing.
Maylands man Brendon O’Connell, 38, was yesterday charged under racial vilification laws for allegedly posting anti-Semitic video on the internet site.
Mr O’Connell is seen on film in front of Perth’s Bell Tower and at a South Perth supermarket while allegedly making anti-Semitic comments.
He was yesterday charged by the police State Security Investigation Group with conduct with intent to incite racial animosity or racist harassment.
The maximum penalty for the offence is 14 years’ jail, or fines of up to $24,000.
“Our officers have been dealing with youtube,” Mr O’Callaghan told reporters this morning.
“They are a US based company. We don’t have any jurisdiction over them, but we have been working with them to pull the video down and they have been fairly co-operative in the past.
“Now I can’t forecast what the outcome will be here, but we are continuing to work with youtube on the issue.”
Opposition Multicultural Interests spokesman John Hyde - who alerted police, Jewish community leaders and the Ethnic Communities Council of WA about the videos - praised WA Police for using the anti-vilification laws to lay the charges.
“Members of the multicultural community can take comfort in the knowledge that this alleged race hate crime will now go before the courts,” Mr Hyde said.
It is believed to be the second time a person has been charged under the racial vilification laws, which were introduced by the previous Labor government and were designed to outlaw the publication, distribution or display in oral, written or pictorial form of material that was threatening or abusive and intended to cause hatred or contempt or ridicule.
Update
Friends of Palestine note in a press release that the individual in question was never a member of their organisation and had crashed their protest, presumably for his own ends. FightDemBack! would like to remind commentators that the Friends of Palestine are an innocent party to this incident and have publically condemned Anti-Semitism as unwelcome to their cause.
First, Nicole Hanley, an Australian employee of French corporation ‘The Thales Group’, has been suspended from her job following revelations that she is an active member of the international neo-Nazi skinhead organisation ‘Blood & Honour’:
One of Australia’s largest Defence Department-linked companies has suspended a contractor over her alleged links to an international neo-Nazi group.
Nicole Hanley, a bid support manager for Thales - which has hundreds of millions of dollars in Department of Defence contracts - is alleged to have been involved as an administrator of the neo-Nazi web forum Blood & Honour.
The claims have been made by whistleblower site Wikileaks, which has published a hacked database containing private messages between the group’s members.
According to the Wikileaks private message trail it is claimed that Hanley has published a detailed online diary of her travels to Europe last year, which included attending several neo-Nazi skinhead gatherings, visiting Adolf Hitler’s birthplace, placing flowers on his parents’ grave and collecting Nazi memorabilia…
Secondly, B&H Australia has encountered a spot of bother following reports that the group is organising a gig in Perth on ANZAC Day (April 25). In response to criticism emanating from the RSL and general public, B&H Perth representative Murray Holmes compared Adolf Hitler to John HoWARd!
Mr Holmes said fascism had come a long way since the days when Adolf Hitler was Fuhrer.
“We’re not disciples of Hitler,” he assured.
“Adolf did some good and he did some bad, like Johnny Howard did good and bad, probably more bad than good.”
Joining Murray on stage on April 25 will be Jesse, a bonehead (and member of another nutzi group the Southern Cross Hammerskins) who sings in Melbourne band Ravenous. Jesse is also involved in a new business venture called 9percentproductions.com. A perusal of their online catalogue suggests that, contra Holmes, little has changed for nutzis since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out while hiding in his bunker in 1945. Some of the many fabulous items on sale include:
‘Der ewige Jude’ (The Eternal Jew) by Volkszorn;
‘Fetch the Rope’ by The Klansmen;
‘Freezer Full of Nigger Heads’ by Grinded Nig and;
‘Alcoholocaust’ by Jew Slaughter.
An event widely recognised as being pivotal in shaping Anglo-Australian relations occurred in 1882, when an Australian cricket team beat England on an English ground for the first time. The following day, on August 30, 1882, the Sporting Times carried a mock obituary to English cricket which concluded that: “The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”.
Hence: The Ashes.
(The first team to tour England, in 1868, was composed of Australian Aborigines, and coached by Tom Wills, who was instrumental in developing the game of Australian Rules football. Wills is honoured with a sculpture at the MCG by Louis Laumen, erected in 2002. The sculpture reads that Wills: “Did more than any other person - as footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game - to develop Australian Football during its first decade”; a contribution based — arguably — on his knowledge of and familiarity with the game of marngrook.)
2) The Nutzi Version
As noted several weeks ago, Perth nutzis have some ashes of their own: dead nutzi David Lane’s ashes. Upon announcing that the handful of dust would be scattered in Perth, on Stormfront Down Under, a Victorian Creator asked (February 11): “Sounds good. Who is hosting the event?” To which the ever-helpful Stormfront Down Under moderator Paul Innes (’Steelcap Boot’) replied:
Mr David Lane.
I have just returned from witness to the package that contained the ashes.
All those White Nationalists who wish to attend and show their respects during this overdue service for David [L]ane here in Western Australia will need to contact W.O.T.A.N@hushmail.com
Combat 18 Accused Of Purloining David Lane’s Ashes
Larry Keller
March 11, 2009
He’s been dead nearly two years, but there’s a fight brewing in the white nationalist movement over one of its heroes, David Lane.
Actually, the brouhaha is over only a part of Lane. About one-fourteenth of him. That portion of his ashes is reportedly in Perth, Western Australia, more than 9,000 miles from where he died in Indiana. The last time a dead man’s ashes traveled this far may be when the cremains of LSD devotee Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into orbit in 1997.
How Lane’s ashes got all the way to Perth is a matter of controversy. Women for Aryan Unity activist Victoria “Vickie” Cahill is accusing members of the Australian division of the violent neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18 of misappropriating the ashes “through lies” and then “sending rape threats, threats of beatings” to Cahill and other WAU members when they protested.
“We want those ashes back,” Cahill posted to Stormfront and her MySpace page March 9.
Some background:
Lane died in March 2007 in a federal prison in Terre Haute at the age of 68. He was serving a 190-year sentence for racketeering, conspiracy and violating the civil rights of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg, who was murdered in his driveway in 1984 by Lane and other members of the Bruders Schweigen, or Silent Brotherhood. The terrorist group was also known as The Order. Lane, a onetime member of the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, was a founding member of the group and served as the getaway driver in the Berg murder.
While in prison, Lane wrote screeds about race and became revered among white nationalists. He is perhaps best known for coining the “14 Words,” “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children.” He co-founded 14 Word Press in Idaho to publish his writings. After his death, neo-Nazi stage mom April Gaede announced that she “and the gals from WAU [Women for Aryan Unity]” had created a memorial fund to have Lane’s ashes stored in the capstone of a pyramid monument to be erected in a white homeland, per Lane’s wishes.
But the gals couldn’t raise enough money for a full-sized pyramid, Gaede later revealed, and so they decided to apportion Lane’s ashes among 14 miniature pyramids – one for each of the 14 Words. Each of the puny pyramids was to be enshrined in the homes of 14 white nationalist women, including Cahill.
It wasn’t long before Gaede and Cahill and other members of Women for Aryan Unity were feuding over Lane-related matters, with Gaede accusing the WAU coven of “showing off” Lane’s remains at white nationalist events.
Now Cahill is urging a boycott of a proposed “ash spreading memorial service” for Lane in Perth. An invitation to “pro-White concious [sic] people” to attend the big event was posted last month on Stormfront. “Date will be finalized when attending numbers have been estimated,” it read. “Civil and neat attire is expected for the proceedings.”
Cahill is vowing to reclaim the ashes before said proceedings can proceed. “If I have to make my way to Australia to get these ashes I will,” she wrote. Cahill then added, ominously, “I will be contacting the bruders about this.”
Hmmm. The bruders ~ versus ~ the Innes brothers. I’d pay to see that.
ACHTUNG!
Jake is the man with the plan. And access to David Lane’s ashes. He’s also desperate for a drummer. His band, Indigenous Hate, will be playing a gig in Perth to celebrate the deaths of Australian soldiers in WWII. Scheduled to take place on ANZAC Day (April 25), it is being organised by Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins, with Murray Holme’s band The Quick & the Dead and Melbourne band Ravenous. Jake (February 11, 2009):
Perth band Indigenous Hate are in desperate need of a new drummer. With weeks to go until some gigs, and half way through recording our album, our drummer has done the dodgy on us and left us in the dark. I am willing to pay for someone, anyone, across Australia, to come over to Perth and live for a couple of months so we can play the gigs and record the rest of the album. I can email a couple of songs that we have done in the studio to see what we sound like, but if you like hard, skinhead music, you wont be disap[p]ointed. Please contact me, Jake, A.S.A.P [at] W.O.T.A.N@hushmail.com.
Woman charged over ‘brutal train assault’ in Perth
Nicole Cox, police reporter
November 18, 2008
RAIL police have charged a woman with brutally bashing a train passenger who had asked her to tone down her offensive language.
Detective Sergeant Brian Beck told Perthnow that police yesterday apprehended a woman wanted over the October attack in which the female victim was allegedly punched in the face and had her head repeatedly slammed into the floor of the train carriage.
Acting on intelligence, officers attended a house in Marangaroo on Monday and discovered a 22-year-old woman hiding under a pile of clothes in a cupboard.
Police arrested the woman and have charged her with one count of assault occasioning bodily harm. She will appear in Perth Magistrates Court on Thursday.
The charges relate to an attack alleged to have happened on the afternoon of Saturday October 11, when Tegan, a 23-year-old receptionist, was bashed on a Stirling-bound train.
Tegan suffered terrible facial injuries and was treated in hospital.
Last week, Tegan’s lawyer Karina Hafford said her client, who feared reprisals, believed the attack would not have happened if security guards were on the train.
Ms Hafford said the victim and other passengers, including children, had moved to another carriage to get away from the woman’s “obscene and racist comments”.
A male passenger alerted the driver about the woman and was told security officers would be notified.
“When they got to the next station they anticipated security would get on the train and take action but no one did,” Ms Hafford said.
“As they approached Stirling Station the alleged assailant walked down the aisle towards our client threatening to bash her. She then punched her in the face and repeatedly slammed her head onto the floor.”
Ms Hafford said the attack ended when a male passenger intervened. There were no security staff at Stirling station and the abusive woman was able to walk away.
ABORIGINAL and Torres Strait Islander flags emblazoned with swastikas and found flying on October 27 at the Broome Highway-Short Street roundabout were the work of “gutless racists”, according to Kimberley Land Council chairman Wayne Bergmann.
The flags, which hung about 2m in length from one of the newly installed roundabout lights, were reported to the Shire by a KLC staff member about 1pm. Broome Shire president Graeme Campbell said staff immediately set about removing the flags. But Horizon Power staff took the offending items down before they were required.
“I don’t know how it got there but it’s appalling that something like that happened,” Cr Campbell said. “There’s no reason for it.”
Mr Bergmann said the action was “extremely distasteful and disappointing” and he was at a loss to explain what may have sparked it. “It’s a complete disrespect, we all live in this community and it shows how pathetic some people can be in trying to incite a race card,” he said.
“The police should take this very seriously and investigate. Actions like this need to be stamped out - unless challenged they may encourage further racial vilification.”
But Mr Bergmann said he believed the majority in Broome were tolerant. He said the last time he had come across anything of this magnitude was about six years ago when pamphlets were distributed making derogatory comments about the stolen generation.
Broome police Sen. Sgt Rob Neesham said the action would not fall under racial vilification laws but declined to comment further on the incident.
Three men from the Pilbara town of Hedland have been charged over what police allege was a racially motivated attack at a local park last week.
Police allege the men taunted and racially abused a group of 20 Muslim men, women and children who had gathered at Cemetery Beach Park to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
They allegedly punched some of the men, one of whom is believed to have been struck with broken glass.
A 27-year-old man has been charged with aggravated assault occasioning bodily harm and aggravated assault that was racially motivated.
Another 27-year-old has been charged with disorderly conduct and possession of cannabis and a 29-year-old faces two counts of reckless driving.
The men have been granted bail and will appear in the South Hedland Magistrates Court later this week.
Aboriginal woman wins compo over neighbour’s racist abuse
Peter Gregory
October 2, 2008
An Aboriginal woman has won $7500 compensation for being racially vilified by a former neighbour for more than two years.
In the tiny Western Australian town of Wundowie, about 70 kilometres north-east of Perth, Kaye Campbell endured derogatory and racist name-calling from neighbour Mervyn Kirstenfeldt after she and her family moved next door in Wattle Crescent.
Mrs Campbell complained under racial discrimination laws that the abuse included name-calling while her son and his friends - some Aboriginal, and some not - were playing cricket at her house on Australia Day.
That episode earned Kirstenfeldt a disorderly conduct conviction and $600 fine in the Northam Magistrates Court.
On Monday, in the Federal Magistrates Court, he was ordered to pay Mrs Campbell compensation for a number of incidents between October 2005 and November 2007.
Magistrate Toni Lucev said Kirstenfeldt wrote an unqualified apology offering his sincerest apologies and deepest regret for anything that caused Mrs Campbell, 47, and her family distress or embarrassment.
Mr Lucev said Kirstenfeldt denied allegations of unlawful conduct when cross-examined in court, and said he had been prepared to apologise because “I just want it out of my hair”.
In her complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Mrs Campbell said she and her family were called “black bastards” and other racist names, and were told to “go back to the scrub where we belong”.
According to the complaint: “Mrs Campbell said that she wanted … Kirstenfeldt to stop calling her names and wanted to be compensated for the pain and humiliation that … Kirstenfeldt has caused her.
She said the abuse did not stop even though she was granted a misconduct restraining order.
Mr Lucev awarded damages for the hurt and humiliation Mrs Campbell suffered. He said he would not make orders restraining Kirstenfeldt from breaching the Racial Discrimination Act in the future.
“In the court’s view, he is unlikely to do so as Mrs Campbell has moved away, and he wishes to be rid of the matter,” Mr Lucev said.
Narrogin man’s ‘assault’ was racist: family
20th September 2008
The alleged taunting and beating of an Aboriginal man by up to 20 people outside a hotel in Narrogin highlights the growing racism problem blighting the Wheatbelt town, according to the man’s family.
Narrogin Aboriginal Community Reference Group chairwoman Priscilla Kickett, who is alleged victim Warren Kickett’s sister, said racism was contributing to a sense of despair and hopelessness felt by many young Nyoongar men and fuelling the town’s high suicide rate.
In the past six months, at least four young Nyoongar men have taken their lives.
At a community meeting in June, Aboriginal and community leaders claimed Nyoongar people were increasingly being ignored by health services which were not equipped to meet their cultural needs.
Ms Kickett said yesterday that despite years of hard work by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents and a range of government departments, indigenous people were still treated like secondclass citizens and struggled to gain access to health and community services.
She said the reference group was being told of an increasing number of incidents in which Aboriginal people were verbally abused by business owners, employers and colleagues.
“Racism has always been here, but this is the worst it has ever been,” Ms Kickett said. “Aboriginals in this town are still treated as second-class citizens.
“We were thinking we were moving ahead, very slowly but still moving ahead, and this happens and it is like a punch in the guts.”
It is alleged Mr Kickett was taunted and beaten by a group of up to 20 non-Aboriginal men and women outside Narrogin’s Duke of York hotel last Saturday. Police allege Mr Kickett became upset and punched a 20-year-old man who he believed made some of the comments.
Another man in the group used his mobile phone to call Edwin Staphorst for help. It is alleged Mr Staphorst, 52, arrived outside the hotel and assaulted Mr Kickett with a baseball bat.
Mr Kickett was arrested at the scene. He was treated for bruising and charged with damage and assault. Mr Staphorst was charged several days later with assault and possessing an article with intent to injure.
Ms Kickett claimed police action in detaining only her brother at the scene was an indication of an underlying racism in the town which ran so deep that most of the community no longer challenged it.
“If you were visiting Narrogin you would not see it, but when you live here and live among it every day the racism is undeniable,” Ms Kickett said. “But we grew up here, we are not going away and we are prepared now to stand up for what we want in our community.”
Narrogin officer-in-charge Sen-Sgt Martin Voyez dismissed allegations of racism against his officers, saying their first priority was to diffuse the violent situation. He said police had to delay charging anyone else over the brawl until they had time to interview all of the witnesses.
Sen-Sgt Voyez said he believed the brawl was an isolated incident. He denied there was racial tension in the town. Mr Kickett and Mr Staphorst will appear in Narrogin Magistrate’s Court next month.
WA jailing too many Aborigines, says sociologist
Victoria Laurie
September 05, 2008
ABOUT one in 10 Aboriginal men is in prison in Western Australia, and that figure could rise to one in five within five years.
Dr Dot Goulding, a sociologist from Murdoch University’s Restorative Justice Research Unit, said incarceration of Aboriginal people was headed for “shameful levels” in a wealthy state.
“It’s got worse, not better,” she said. “Ten to 15 years ago, around 35 per cent of the adult prison population was Aboriginal, but now it’s consistently up around 41-44 per cent.”
On the eve of the state election, Dr Goulding endorsed the views of Aboriginal Legal Service head Dennis Eggington, who said both political parties had failed to address the over-representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system. He said the state government had not acted on its own Aboriginal Customary Law Report, which had called “as a matter of priority” for Aboriginal courts to be established to handle indigenous offenders, especially in rural areas.
WA lacked a state-wide interpreting service for indigenous offenders, he said, “despite interpreters being available for most other cultural groups”. And Aboriginal women were still being jailed for unpaid fines.
He said the rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal people in WA was almost double that of the Northern Territory.
“What’s the point of (political leaders) talking up the economy if you’re letting down the community?” he said.
Dr Goulding said that, on current trends, more than half the state’s prison population would be indigenous within five years. “It’s absolutely appalling and a gross overrepresentation,” she said.
An even more alarming figure was the number of Aboriginal juveniles already in detention — between 70 per cent and 75 per cent of all young inmates, despite WA’s indigenous population making up a mere 3 per cent of the population, Dr Goulding said.
And with reoffending rates up around 75 per cent among indigenous prisoners in the state (against around 45 per cent in non-indigenous ones), Aboriginal youths were very likely to return to jail.
Dr Goulding said a raft of factors predisposed Aboriginal youngsters to be scooped up into the custodial system, such as WA’s “three strikes” legislation for repeat juvenile offenders.
“If they are caught three times and — unlike the majority of white middle-class young offenders — poorly represented in court, they end up being sent to detention instead of diversion programs.”
In addition, Aboriginal prisoners who spoke only an Aboriginal language were disadvantaged by a lack of translators. “You have a better chance of getting a court interpreter if you are Chinese-speaking than if you are Aboriginal,” Dr Goulding said.
“The prison system has to deal with whoever is sent to it by the courts. So we need to step back and look at Aboriginal arrest rates and the courts to see how sentencing trends impact heavily on Aboriginal people.”
Dr Goulding said little attention was paid to the children of Aboriginal inmates and the impact of incarceration on family life. Of 30,000 indigenous children in WA, it was estimated that around 6000 children had one or both parents in prison.
The result was that families were often enmeshed in institutionalised racism that led straight to jail. She cited the case of “Irene”, a 31-year-old mother of 10 who served a term in jail.
“She saw her life as being totally controlled by government departments,” Dr Goulding said.
Zentai’s fate in the hands of the minister
NAOMI LEVIN
AFTER years of court battles, the decision over whether to extradite Charles Zentai to Hungary to face war crimes charges will be made by one man — Federal Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus.
Luckily for the Jewish community, Debus has an exemplary record in pursuing justice.
Debus, who is 64, is well known to residents of New South Wales as a former long-time state MP. He has held a number of state portfolios, including seven years as NSW attorney-general.
He is less known nationally, after being elected to Federal Parliament only last year, but his state-level experience led to his immediate front bench appointment as minister for home affairs.
According to Robert Goot and Peter Wertheim, members of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Debus is well regarded within the Jewish community.
Most recently, he was instrumental in assisting the quick passage of legislation that made Jewish security expenses tax deductible.
Wertheim, the former president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, who worked closely with Debus when he was NSW attorney-general, said “unlike many other politicians, Bob is an independent thinker and does not fit neatly into any ideological pigeon-hole”.
He spoke of a man who worked hard, even when it was not politically popular, to help eliminate racial vilification.
“I remember being called to Bob’s office to discuss an anti-Semitic publication that had come to his notice,” Wertheim said. “He was genuinely outraged by it and sought advice about prosecuting the publisher.”
Debus was informed that criminal prosecution was not an option, so he set about appointing a committee, eventually chaired by Wertheim, to consider amending the NSW anti-vilification laws.
“The working party made certain recommendations, which Bob fully supported, even though he knew they would not be politically popular and they were, in fact, blocked by senior bureaucrats,” Wertheim said.
“It was one of the few occasions Bob did not get his way. But there was no doubt where his sympathies lay.”
Last month Magistrate Barbara Lane ruled that Zentai -– who is being pursued by the Hungarian government for allegedly murdering a Hungarian Jewish teenager during the Holocaust – had satisfied administrative requirements for extradition.
According to the bilateral extradition treaty signed by Australia and Hungary in 1997, a number of criteria must be fulfilled.
The alleged crime must be punishable by more than one year in prison, and it must be an offence under the laws of both countries. The charges must not be politically motivated.
Following Lane’s decision, and pending Zentai’s appeal, it will be up to Debus to ensure the judicial requirements for extradition have been fulfilled.
According to the Attorney-General’s Department, the minister has to be assured that the accused will not face torture following extradition and that the alleged crime is not punishable by death.
Finally, the minister can use his own discretion in making the final decision and this may include the consideration of any humanitarian aspects.
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From NEWS.COM.AU
